Individualizing Treatment - Broadening the Framework for Urinary Incontinence Research

Event Details

Meeting Summary

Background

While treatment options exist for people with urinary incontinence (UI), outcomes vary and there is insufficient information about the individual biologic and non-biologic factors that might affect treatment success. More tailored approaches may help clinicians initiate the optimal UI treatment for a specific patient.

Meeting Purpose

This is the first of two meetings to be held in 2017. The overarching goal of the meeting series is to develop fundable, interdisciplinary, investigator-initiated research proposals that will lead to better outcomes for currently available treatments by individualizing them to each patient, considering characteristics across the spectrum from biology to the social determinants of health.

Adopting this broader framework for research will require engaging researchers from scientific fields beyond urology. We encourage participants to get outside of their comfort zones and think broadly about what factors might be involved in successful treatment outcomes. The goal will be to identify as many factors as possible, working in interdisciplinary groups to shape research questions.

The first meeting will set the stage on the status of existing treatments and the factors that may predict treatment success, and it will encourage participants to brainstorm research questions and approaches. The second meeting, to be held in Summer or Fall 2017, will focus on refining and focusing research approaches.

Meeting Objectives

As a first step toward achieving personalized medicine in UI, the National Institutes of Health is hosting a meeting on March 30 and 31, 2017 to:

Small Group Sessions
Brainstorm and ideate research questions that will address how a variety of factors—including local and systemic biologic, behavioral, cognitive, and social determinants—may affect treatment success across treatment types and populations